Howard Kurtz: Media Partisans, Broken by "Trump Trauma," Have Thrown Away all Professional Standards in Order to Become Full Liberal Democrat Partisans Against Trump (and Republicans)

Donald Trump is staking his presidency, as he did his election, on nothing less than destroying the credibility of the news media; and the media are determined to do the same to him. This is not just a feud or a fight or a battle. It is scorched-earth warfare in which only one side can achieve victory.

To a stunning degree, the press is falling into the president's trap. The country's top news organizations have targeted Trump with an unprecedented barrage of negative stories, with some no longer making much attempt to hide their contempt. Some stories are legitimate, some are not, and others are generated by the president's own falsehoods and exaggerations. But the mainstream media, subconsciously at first, has lurched into the opposition camp and is appealing to an anti-Trump base of viewers and readers, failing to grasp how deeply it is distrusted by a wide swath of the country.

These are not easy words for me to write. I am a lifelong journalist with ink in my veins. And for all my criticism of the media's errors and excesses, I have always believed in the mission of aggressive reporting and holding politicians accountable.

But the past two years have radicalized me. I am increasingly troubled by how many of my colleagues have decided to abandon any semblance of fairness out of a conviction that they must save the country from Trump.

...

This is, at bottom, a battle over the truth. Who owns it, who controls it, who can sell their version to a polarized public that increasingly cannot agree on basic facts. Everything you read, hear and see about Trump's veracity is filtered through a mainstream media prism that reflects a lying president -- and virtually never considers the press' own baggage and biases.

Actually he pitches most of this as a case of Trump and his partisans and the media all doing the same thing, but, you know, it's the media which claims to be the God-Appointed Keepers of Truth.

By the way, when you see so many in the media destroying all previous professional guardrails and setting fire to the old rulebook, due to being so politically broken by Trump -- is it terribly hard to believe that FBI agents, DOJ officials, and CIA/NSA staffers did the same?

If this "Trump Trauma" can derange one group of politically-motivated "professionals," why would other professions with similar propensities for political motivation be immune?

So when the Deep State and its apparatchiks, like the NeverTrumpers, say "How dare you suggest our professional civil servants would ever compromise their integrity in pursuit of a partisan end!," say to them:

What about CNN? What about the Weekly Standard? What about the Free Beacon paying Fusion GPS to dig dirt on Trump and Cruz -- but, strangely enough for an alleged news operation, not paying them to dig dirt on Little Marco Rubio or John The Mailman's Son Kasich?

What about you yourselves?

The political battlefield is littered with lunatics literally deranged by Trump -- but I'm supposed to take some Deep State jock-sniffers' word for it that this could never happen to the straight-shooters of the FBI, DOJ, CIA and NSA?